Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The Good Steward: A Lenten Journey

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver

The weight of Mary
Oliver’s words fall heavy. And they are
supposed to be, heavy I mean. Like something overripe, and waiting on a
limb. The gentlest breeze seems to give
it that force to find grounding where it hits, with a muffling sound and a
fragrance that’s just too dangerous because of how rich it is. Today is Ash Wednesday and begins our Lenten season of waiting and considering the determined path Jesus took towards his crucifixion.

What I understand of
Biblical history or the ancillaries surrounding it, the average life expectancy
for a man in those days was similar to that of classical Rome, before the advent
of modern medicine and was from 30-35 years.
Jesus, from all we can understand, died after starting his ministry at
the age of 30; he had three Passovers.
He was 33 years old. To me that
doesn’t seem to be either rich, full, ripe or dangerous. But it was all of those.

When I lately read a
novel, I noted these words, “Life. Rich, vibrant, contrary life. How very much she loved it, and what a fickle
steward she had been.” The heroine in
this case, had a gun to her temple and had spent most of the novel worrying
about appearances, considering independence, and forgoing the courage to claim
the love of her life. It wasn’t any of
these that moved me though, it was her choice of phrase that struck me:
steward. At the end of the world, then, her
regret was the lack of stewardship she had shown in guarding and guiding the
one life she had been given to live.

And then I saw it,
that Lent could be about a new kind of stewardship—one that carefully
considered my one wild and precious life.
And I thought, here I have 40 days to turn it around, to make it rich,
vibrant, and whole. To do that, to make
that happen, would require every minute of those 57600 in them. Because I finally feel like I’m understanding
it, if I don’t do this, if I am not a better steward I will not be fulfilling
what I can do or be here. And I will be
the poorer for it, and so will you, and God will wonder why hadn’t I
seen it before it was too late.

You have seen proposed
changes like this right? The eating
plans and the living plans, the promises and testimonials about how everything
can turn around if ____ was just given a chance. And it is difficult because of all you have
to do. Obligations for work, for school,
for children, for spouse, for parents and for friends. We have to be good and patient stewards for
all of this, the cost not to do it well and consciously is so very high. And we become good at it if not
unenthusiastic.

We get up and work and
we kiss children, we listen to dreams, we encourage, we motivate, we try to
make better choices, we fight our own nature to tend to ourselves because that,
we are told, is selfish. So, we become good
stewards. We fulfill our obligations and
if there is breath and ability left, there is still more to do: the environment—political,
social and natural, the causes, the pain you see. And before too long, you feel you are failing
and falling fast. Unable to fulfill your
role well in any of them. And you wonder
sadly, if this is what life was supposed to be?

No.

This Lent I want to
unpack all of that. Because a small line
in a novel reminded me of something very important, that the first stewardship
entrusted to us is for our very own lives.
And unless that life is lived with purpose and joy, there is no ability
to minister to anyone else. Your own
despair wins out instead. “Choose life,
so that you and your children will live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

The objective of
Lent is to see what has been given so that you can feel whole. Something gets lost in the thoughts of
penance and abstinence. We are already
really, really good at punishing ourselves in my reckoning. We are absolutely ready to take blame, understanding
that it is our lack of will that has put on pounds where we don’t want them,
our ignorance that has allowed for a thousand situations to happen. Guilt is something we are well versed in. And the whole world obliges, by playing upon
it. Letting us know that we are never,
ever enough.

None of that matters
to God, and maybe, just maybe this Lent is time for you to see it. That you are indeed enough. Just as you are. And once you know that, once you stand in
stewardship of your life as it is, once you allow yourself to embrace the joy
that has been paid in full for you, you can allow yourself stewardship that is exhilarating
rather than exhausting. God wants you to
care for yourself. To love you so you
can love everyone else. To love you the
way you are loved by God.

For me this is
looking carefully at what is making me less than, what gives voice to the whispers of
discontent that then become loud roars of rage and anger.

The premise is simple, I promise: once you find what is making your
heart hurt and fear the fall, you can begin to live and that’s worth the 40
days to figure out.

If it is the work
that I do, that I may have fallen into by chance rather than choice, and it is
unfulfilling, is there a way I can carve out time for something that gives me
joy? Is there a community choir I can join,
a local theatre group I can audition for, a crafting group I can start, a dog
that I can walk, a retirement home I can bake or garden for, a newborn I can
snuggle?

If the children that
you love are making it hard for you to love, maybe there is a playgroup you can
leave them with just for an hour. A
chance for you to breathe again and miss them.

If the noise of the
world is crashing in with the sorrows and the grandstanding and the sheer lack
of understanding, it is time to find the quiet.
Get into your car and drive to one of the parks in your area. Walk for 5 minutes. See where you are, breathe deeply, and walk
back. Those moments spent in the quiet
green of life and hum, will resonate with you and make you believe again in
possibilities.

If the diet that
requires exclusion of the sugar you crave, and you stand with a fork in the
leftover cake at 10:00, hating every bite maybe it’s time to ask why it is you
need the sweetness to begin with? What
is missing? What is hurting that
requires it?

If the exercise
class is too difficult or too far away and you cannot go back or the gym
membership is being unused, and either or both are making you feel once again a
failure at health and resolve then go outside to your backyard or that of a community
garden. Rake, shift, plant and
consider. Your arms will ache, your legs
will too but you will breathe sweet, cool air and feel accomplishment.

If the friendship
has been silent and you fear it cannot be mended, try to reach out and
connect. No matter what else, without
answering the siren’s song of that relationship, its ghost will continue to
haunt you. You don’t need anything that
does that.

If the mess around
you leaves you breathless with its enormity, the sheer volume of paper and
packages and bits that you thought were at once necessary, that it saps your
will to do writing or the dreaming or the crafting that you love, perhaps it’s
time to set the timer, get a bag and get some bags to fill with care to recycle
what has been forgotten already and is weighing you down with its mocking
volume. (The piles are definite: shred,
recycle, donate. No more than 3 seconds for each decision,
the amount of time it took you to purchase or bring it in in the first place.)

If the days wake you
with memories of times when you lived selfishly, spoke sharply, hated and hurt
intentionally, it’s time to put all of those down. Because those thoughts hold you back and make
you weary. You will never be able to
move forward if you are always looking behind you. Forgive yourself. You have to.
Everyone makes mistakes. Being a
good steward requires that you have accountability and enact it judiciously. You will not repeat your past, leave it there.

We were never meant
to carry so much. Encumbrances like
those will hurt you unnecessarily. And
you’ve been hurt enough already.

You are whole. You are amazing. You are enough.

Ripe, rich, full and a little dangerous. Because any life well lived is all of those
if we are lucky enough or foolish enough or a combination of the two. To love greatly, to listen carefully, to
consider and to move when necessary.
This Lent discover the way to become a steward of your own life. At the end of 40 days, when we come to celebrate
the resurrection of the risen Christ, the fulfillment of a such a loved
promise, we can extend that energy, love, richness and grace we have located
within ourselves to everyone we can hope to know. And that is life changing. That’s exactly what we are meant to do.

So tell me, my
friend, what are you going to do with yourone wild and precious life? Grace and peace be with you this Easter
season.

What the story said...my reviews on goodreads

“You must understand, this is one of those moments.” “What moments?” “One of the moments you keep to yourself,” he said. “What do you mean?” I said. “why?” “We’re in a war,” he said. “The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. [….] But something like this—this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us” (56). This moment, in Téa Obreht’s lyrical first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, tells you the entirety of the story of love and loss, of memory, maps and war, of science, fables and imagined histories. The tale, set in a fictional Balkan province, is about the relationship between the narrator, Natalia and her grandfather who is a doctor. And the story involves the wars that have ravaged that area for years.

If you think back to the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, you may remember the horror and shock of those years of unending war. The bombing of a 400 year old bridge, the massacres, the deadening of Sarajevo. While none of these events are overtly, or even covertly, covered in the novel, their echo remains. This is a novel whose strength lies in the ability to translate myth and fable, to make the moments that seem almost unknowable known. The excerpt offered in the beginning of this review is an example of that, the Grandfather takes the young Natalia past curfew to witness the surreal site of a starving elephant being led on the city streets to the closed city zoo, the place of their weekly pilgrimages. During mercurial times, there was this moment of placidity and fantasy. The war which raged and continued and was irrational as wars are, there is the fantastical presence of an elephant sloping up the quiet neighborhood street. While Natalia frets that no one will believe her, her grandfather corrects her idea by telling her that history can be something personalized and intimate. Not meant to be shared by the world, but by those who you love and trust to see your vision. It makes sense, because when histories are challenged and threatened, documents concerning your birth, the death of your families are challenged or lost, history becomes something far more ephemeral. Far more illusory unless it is placed in the permanence of your own heart.

She begins Chapter 2 by saying, “Everything necessary to understand my Grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man” (32). So it is between these poles of myth and story that we can locate the history of this narrator and her grandfather, both physicians, both straddling the line between science and home remedy. I could tell you at length about both, but that truly would be spoiling the journey of the story for you. But I will say that the language Obreht uses is so languid and lush, masterful and mindful that you begin to be seduced by it all. So reason, the questions of markings of slippery occurrences of war that do belong to the world that could ground the reader in the world Obreht is translating is lost because that is the moment she is NOT choosing to share. But here is the thing. I needed it. Even in a footnote or an afterward. I needed a timeline of the events that brought the destruction of these people to such impossibilities of existence. Because even though it is a public history, it is one I do not know well. It would be wrong to assume the knowledge on the part of a Western audience I think, it’s unfortunate that this is not a familiar landscape or language. I know, in the recesses of my mind I know the wars in the Balkans. The horrors, the rape camps of Bosnia, the destruction, the evacuation of Serbians…but I don’t know enough, not nearly enough to be lulled into this lush tale. A part of me refused to be completely seduced by it. Because I didn’t understand enough about it.

There is a way in which myth sustains us when horrors are too much. When person and home and identity fall away, and where you cannot locate your birthplace on a map, because it has been eliminated, what do you hold onto except your stories? As the author writes, “We had used a the map on every road trip we had ever taken, and it showed in the marker scribbling all over it: the crossed-out areas we were supposed to avoid…. I couldn’t find Zdrevkov, the place where my grandfather died, on that map. I couldn’t find Brejevina either, but I had known in advance that it was missing, so we had drawn it in” (16). Map lines, map dots, erased and redrawn because of war. How do you locate who you are, if you cannot really know where you are from? The erasing of history, of place, of belonging, of self is such a legitimate tragic legacy of war. So it is understandable that the novel moves between these two myths to bookend it, asking the reader to locate the grandfather and the narrator in its midst. I just think that the novel, which is a remarkable achievement for such a young writer, would have been that much more strong, viscerally, had it had the historical reference points it alluded to. That being said, though, it is a novel of quiet questions and loud answers and makes you wonder long after you’ve set it aside. Questions like, “What is the moment you have? The one you find that belongs to you? Who will you share it with and what familiar myth might you create?”